Without Child
by julliet15
Summary: She didn't realize how much she wanted a baby until she discovered she could never have one. Hearing the doctor's news, she wonders if her husband really meant it when he had told her "I'll always love you." Inspired by Tumblr posts that pointed out that the mercury poisoning probably messed up Korra's reproductive system, thereby making her unable to have children. Makorra.


**Makorra, my babies! Personally, I like to imagine that they could have kids despite the odds (cause c'mon, they'd have beautiful babies and we can't deny the world that). At the same time though, I wanted to explore a sadder/angstier side of the story at least once. So, here it is. Also, a big thanks to my unofficial beta-reader QuirkyRevelations for all the helpful feedback.**

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><p>Mako couldn't believe he was saying this, but he actually missed the days when he was babysitting Prince Wu in Republic City. Every day for the past two weeks he had been out in the field or at the police station for twelve to fifteen hours straight, after which he would promptly fall face-down on the first bed he saw when he got home. The only pleasant part was when Korra would sit down beside him and massage his hair with the gentle, circular motion of her calloused fingers. Despite his miserable fatigue, he would always fight to stay awake just so he could relish the comfortable tangle of her fingers in his hair for a few more moments. Before he knew it, he was groaning at the obnoxious metal clanging of the clock at his bedside the next morning. Somehow, Korra always managed to sleep through it.<p>

Except for today. Mako's hand came crashing on the top of the shiny silver clock, but when the blasted thing had settled down, he could hear retching coming from the tiny hallway bathroom. His hand spread an arc on his right side, and, not feeling his wife beside him, he realized what was happening. He kicked off the stifling wool covers and went straight to knock on the bathroom door. She didn't respond, so he pressed his ear to the smooth dark brown wood of the door to hear whether the retching had stopped. Mako only picked up the sound of heavy breathing, which he hoped meant the end of her ordeal. His pale knuckles rapped again on the door, and he said, "Sweetie?" She seemed to try to gasp an answer, but then another wave of nausea must have hit her before she began vomiting again. Several minutes later, Korra finally opened the door and Mako stood still, not sure what to say or do.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to throw up on you," she sighed, as a weary smile began to form on her face.

"Sweetie, are you all right?" Mako asked, placing his hands on her arms.

"Yeah, I think so," she mumbled. "Except this is the third time it's happened."

"Third?" he echoed. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"You were always at work, and I thought it was just the stomach flu."

"I'm taking you to the doctor."

"No, I can take myself. You need to get ready for work."

"I can't just leave you like this."

"Mako, Chief Beifong will roast your hide if you're late to work. Trust me, I can handle this."

Mako sighed; he knew arguing was futile. "All right."

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><p>Mako may as well have stayed home, because all he could think about was how his wife was doing while he was at the station. Beifong finally kicked him out with a warning not to come back until he had his head screwed on straight. When Mako made it home, he stopped at the front door and pinched the skin between his eyebrows. Whatever was behind that door, he wasn't sure if he was ready to face it. Sucking in a breath of courage, he straightened his shoulders, unlocked the door, and went inside. Korra's back was turned from him as she set the table, which was adorned with a dark red table cloth, several slowly burning candles, and porcelain plates. He smelled fresh pork buns, which usually meant either that Korra had done something to make him mad, or he was about to hear really, really great news. It was generally a fifty-fifty turnout between the two.<p>

"Korra?" he said.

Korra gasped and turned around with a large, surprised smile. "You weren't supposed to be back for another hour."

"I got off early," he replied.

At this point Mako noticed Korra was wearing one of the few dresses that she owned (she was more of a pants-wearing girl). Her sleeveless dress was navy blue with white trimming at the bottom, a white collar at the top, and a white band around her waist. It accentuated almost all the curves in her body that he had memorized from all the days and nights he had spent with her all this time. Because the dress didn't even reach her knees, he could see her long, muscular bronze legs and the simple silver flats on her feet. Her cheeks were flushed pink with excitement and her luminescent blue eyes sparked with the typical vivacity he had always loved in her. She ran to him, clasped his hands, and guided him to sit down on their little red sofa in front of the dining table. Korra ran her teeth across her bottom lip as she squeezed Mako's increasingly sweaty hands.

"What is it, honey?" he asked.

"Mako…" Korra bit her lip harder, trying to stop the delighted laughter building up inside her so she could speak. "What would you say if I told you that you were going to be a daddy?"

In his mind appeared an image of him carrying his baby - their baby, a beautiful amalgamation of the both of them. Her eyes, his hair. Her skin, his nose. Her eyebrows (Mako knew that everyone made fun of his), his mouth. He pictured their daughter riding on his shoulders, with her long dark hair flying behind her as she squealed with every bounce of his step. He imagined their son dancing hand-in-hand with Korra alongside the jazz music playing from the radio in their living room. He envisioned their child discovering bending for the first time - the first spray of water accidentally soaking Mako, the first ball of flame nearly burning down their apartment. Everything great and everything terrible swept Mako's mind away in an instantaneous flood of anticipation of what was to come. Blinking, Mako finally reawakened to the world around him and to the hopeful Korra sitting in front of him.

"Korra, are you telling me that you're pregnant?" Mako asked; he had to be sure he wasn't daydreaming for nothing.

"Yes!" she cried.

Mako and Korra unleashed a small cheer as they wrapped themselves around each other. Mako inhaled the vanilla scent in his wife's hair and laughed, holding her close and imagining all that he desired for their future child. He couldn't remember feeling this ecstatic since the day he married Korra.

They had a week of happiness before it fell apart.

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><p>There was a hazy softness to the summer world around him, like he was looking through a camera that didn't quite come to focus. Mako was sitting on a blanket in the middle of a broad green field dotted with flowers of all colors. He spread out the coarse blue material of the blanket beneath him, and when he did so, his fingers bumped against someone else's hand. He turned to his right, seeing the clear blue eyes of his wife and her short dark hair fluttering in the gentle breeze. She held up a glass of bubbling yellow champagne, and Mako realized that he was also holding a glass in his other hand. Wondering where it had come from, he brought it forward to clink with hers. However, at the moment that their glasses kissed, Korra's glass suddenly fell from her hand and shattered. The liquid oozed onto their intertwined hands on the blanket, and Korra began squeezing his hand to the point that he gasped with pain.<p>

"Korra, what are you doing? Korra? Korra!"

The image of the sunny, green-filled world collapsed around him, and when Mako opened his eyes he realized that it had all been a dream. However, he could still feel the pressure of Korra's hand and the wetness all over the right side of his body. Mako turned on the light and recognized the redness of blood soaking their sheets (and part of the underclothes he wore to bed). Korra's eyes were pinched shut and streams of tears were coursing down her face, with new ones forming with every pain-filled sob she made. Mako looked down and saw that the blood was coming from her. Ignoring the fresh stains of blood that it made on his clothes, Mako gathered his wife into his arms and lifted her out of the bed. She shivered and wept and scrunched his shirt with the balls of her fists.

"Everything's going to be all right, Korra," he told her; he fiercely believed it, because if he didn't, he was sure to crumble.

During countless crises and battles over the years, Mako had felt sure he had lost Korra forever, but he didn't feel any more prepared for it actually happening every time a situation like this came up. Mako repeated her name over and over under his breath, hoping that if nothing else she would stay alive.

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><p>"Sir?"<p>

Mako mumbled something, and leaned his weight to the other side of the small blue chair he had stuffed himself into. A hand pushed lightly on his shoulder, and after several blinks Mako finally became fully conscious. With his bleary amber eyes, he realized that the nurse he had first seen when he brought Korra in was standing in front of him. He had fallen asleep in the waiting room, which was lined with bamboo on the walls and helpless, tired people like him snoozing in their chairs. Mako stood up with a jerk, gripped the nurse's shoulders, and asked in one breath: "Where is my wife? How is she? Can I see her? What happened last night? Why aren't you answering any of my questions?" Before answering, the nurse wriggled out of Mako's grasp and glanced at Mako's attire; he was still wearing the blood-stained underwear that he had come in, not even thinking of changing out of it until he knew Korra was okay.

"Come with me, you can see her and have all your questions answered," she informed him.

If Mako had been more familiar with medical personnel, he would have read in the tone of the nurse's voice that what he was about to hear wasn't good. In his excitement to see Korra, however, he only paid attention to following the nurse to the room where Korra was lying down. The weak blue of her irises were void of any sense of happiness, and her lip trembled when she saw her husband at the door. Mako practically shoved the doctor at her bedside so he could lean close to her and touch her forehead with his; it was something they always did when they were in a bad place.

"You're Mako?" asked the doctor.

"Yes," answered Mako, breaking away from Korra to face the doctor.

"I'm afraid I have some unfortunate news."

Mako's hand found Korra's underneath the sheets on her bed.

"We did the best we could, but the baby… the baby did not make it."

Even though he had known this was coming, Mako still felt as if someone was reaching into his chest and squeezing all of the juice out of his heart. Korra's head fell limp on the pillow and her hold of his hand weakened to almost nothing.

"When can we try again?" inquired Mako.

"That's the other thing I have to tell you," said the doctor, shaking her head. "I'm afraid that you can't have children."

"What?" exclaimed Mako and Korra.

"I've been looking more extensively over your records," informed the doctor. "Korra, the mercury poison you had in your body all those years ago affected all of your systems. Your body is incapable of supporting a full-term pregnancy, if it's even possible for you to become pregnant again."

Korra suddenly released Mako's hand altogether and pumped a fistful of fire in front of her with an angry grunt, as if she were attacking an invisible enemy at the end of her bed. The nurse screamed and ran out the door; the doctor dropped her clipboard and stepped back; Mako scrambled forward to pin Korra's arms down. Mako's saucer eyes matched the doctor's when he turned his head to look at her pleadingly.

"A moment of privacy please?" he requested, as Korra shuddered underneath his hold.

"No problem," said the doctor, who left the room with as much professionalism as possible when you are about to break into a run.

After releasing a loud yell of frustration, Korra let her body cave in as she dropped her head and began panting heavily. Sensing that she was no longer struggling beneath his grip, Mako let go of her arms and climbed onto the bed so that he could sit facing her.

"Zaheer nearly destroyed the Avatar state," she murmured brokenly, "but I thought I had finally beaten him. I thought I had got everything out of my system. But even now he's managed to hurt me."

There were so many things Mako wanted to say, but none of them seemed right. Korra still sometimes had nightmares about the Red Lotus that left her screaming from phantom pain. Whenever that happened, he would rub her back as she sobbed into his shirt for up to half the night. Some forms of Korra's pain, as much as Mako tried, he simply couldn't understand.

"I would understand if you wanted out," said Korra.

"Out of what?" Mako asked.

"Out of this marriage. Out of all this. You deserve to have a family, and a wife whose life isn't always in danger."

"Korra, you're doing it again."

Korra sniffed. "Doing what?"

"Pushing away someone who loves you when you're feeling hurt. And I do love you, I do. No matter what."

After a testing stare (as _if_ he would just throw away everything they had been through together, please give him a little credit), Korra flew forward with her arms outstretched. Mako caught her and held her in an honest embrace.

"I wanted a family, and Zaheer took that away from me," she said.

"Sweetheart, you do have a family," Mako replied. "You have me, your parents, Tenzin, Asami, Bolin… the list goes on."

"I-I know, I just… I wanted our own little family…"

Mako sighed and pressed his cheek against Korra's. "So did I. But it's okay. Whether we have kids or not, I still love you."

"I love you too."

They shared a slow, sweet kiss, but Mako didn't feel her return as much affection as she usually did.

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><p>Even after a month's worth of trying, Mako still couldn't get Korra back to her normal level of liveliness. Sure, she smiled relatively frequently and even laughed at his pitiful attempts at a joke; she listened attentively to all his stories coming home from the station; she agreed to watch movers <strong>(1)<strong> with him in the downtown area. Yet, he felt all the time that something was lacking in her. When he teased, she didn't tease back or ruffle his hair (which she knew he hated). When they went dancing, she always seemed to be looking down at her feet (even though she was an excellent dancer who knew all the steps). When he told her about his day, she would nod and smile but she wouldn't offer any information about her day unless he asked. She was still the Avatar, so she was always making speeches, meeting world leaders, training newly discovered airbenders, etc.; therefore he knew she should have a lot to tell him of her own accord. For some reason though, she didn't. When she appeared on public television or spoke on the radio, Mako could sense some force added to her polite smiles and calm voice. Whenever she smiled at him, there was a twinge of sadness mixed in with the happiness.

Mako and Korra hadn't told anyone about the pregnancy, although Asami informed Mako that Korra told her about it afterward. They had been planning to surprise everyone on a special occasion. Mako didn't know how much Korra thought about all their broken dreams for a family, but it was obviously not never. She wouldn't be so disconnected if that were the case. He wondered if she thought (as he sometimes did) that if she had thought differently, planned differently, acted differently, they wouldn't be where they were now. However, in all honesty this was something that was simply out of their hands, no matter how much their thinking tried to tell otherwise. Mako wanted to give Korra something so that she could let go of all her guilt and regret, but what could fulfill the desire that they had both held so strongly? Mako took days of thought on the matter, and when the answer came, he knew it was the perfect one.

Mako approached their bedroom so silently that at first Korra didn't notice him as she prepared to go to sleep. Korra slipped on her pale blue nightgown as she looked at her tired reflection in the mirror above the dresser. As she undid her short ponytail, she noticed Mako standing at the doorway and made a small smile. Mako enjoyed catching her at moments like this, when she had wiped off the small amount of makeup she put on, released all the muscle tension in her body, and let her hair fall loosely on her shoulders. She wasn't putting on an Avatar show for anyone; she was just being Korra. Mako walked to his wife and slid his arms around her waist, causing her to purr suggestively and him to laugh in response.

"I have an idea," he announced.

"Oh no," she said, grinning.

"It's a good one, I promise."

"All right, go ahead."

"Well, you and I have already talked about how much we would like a family." Korra sighed. "So, I was thinking we can have one of the more unconventional kinds."

Korra perked up. "What do you mean?"

"There are so many kids on the streets nowadays. Kids like me and Bolin, and Kai now that I think about it. I was thinking how great it would be if we could give them a home, like how you gave me one."

"Oh," she gasped.

Mako snuggled closer to her and whispered in her ear, "So, do you think it's a good idea?"

Korra sighed and turned within their close embrace so that she could cup both sides of his jaw with her hands.

"It's a wonderful idea," she said, before she brought his lips down to meet hers.

"So, are you happy again?" Mako asked when he withdrew from the kiss.

"I've been happy," protested Korra.

Mako glared at her. "Don't think I don't know you better than that."

Korra smiled, this time with the shade of sadness with which Mako had become familiar.

"Okay, I admit it," she said. "I was sad about the baby we lost. I'll always be sad about it. But I'm thankful that you have been so supportive throughout this whole thing. I'm blessed to have you in my life."

"Me too."

"I don't know how I'll repay you for being so good to me."

"Oh, I think I have a few ideas."

Noticing the slight wriggle of Mako's eyebrows, Korra grinned, curled her hand around the nape of his neck, and began playing with his hair.

"More ideas?" she asked. "Will they ruin my good name?"

"Babe, you can't ruin something that never existed," he purred.

Korra laughed for a moment before Mako kissed her passionately on the lips, and how the rest of their night was spent should be left to their privacy.

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><p><strong>(1) In case, like QuirkyRevelations, the word "movers" confuses you, it's the Avatar universe version of "movies." Varrick made the first "movers" starring Bolin.<strong>

**Out of curiosity, how many people thought that the doctor was male? I used pronouns to indicate that the doctor was female, but some readers might have missed it. Isn't it interesting how we assume certain things about gender and certain professions? And what about the nurse?**

**By the way, I hope y'all don't expect me to give details on how their night was spent. Cuz I don't write M rated fics, guys. It just isn't happening. :P**


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